The federal government on Tuesday laid out a timetable for ratifying the 1,500-page agreement to break down most of the tariff walls between Canada and the 28-nation EU bloc.

But the text of the deal for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Comprehensive — tentatively reached last October following five years of negotiations — has yet to be made public.

Instead, copies of the full document have been sent to all Canadian provinces and territories, and to the EU member states, where they will be translated and reviewed by lawyers.

Only then will CETA be ready for ratification by all parties, according to a Canadian government official who briefed reporters on the agreement Tuesday.

That process is expected to take up to two years, said the official, who provided broad strokes of the elements contained in the document — ranging from mutual access to beef, cheese to autos and financial services. Neither Prime Minister Stephen Harper nor Trade Minister Ed Fast were available for comment on Tuesday.

“Today, it was also announced that Prime Minister Harper and Minister Fast will lead a trade mission to the United Kingdom in early September to secure the jobs and first-mover competitive advantages the historic Canada-EU trade agreement creates,” the federal government said in a statement.

.@HonEdFast: “This is another important step toward the implementation of the historic Canada-EU trade agreement” #CETA — Canada Trade (@Canada_Trade) August 5, 2014

There are also plans for a Canada-EU summit to be hosted in Canada sometime in late September, most likely in Ottawa.

The EU pact is expected to add $12-billion annually to Canada’s economy.

“I think Canada got what it wanted,” said Simon Potter, a partner at McCarthy Tetrault in Montreal.

“It got a lowering of a lot of tariff rates going into Europe. It got a reduction of technical impediments at the border. It preserved its dairy regime — which some people predicted it wouldn’t be able to do, and some people didn’t want it to be able to that at the expense of having to let a little bit more European cheese in,” Mr. Potter said.

“We get to send a lot more beef to Europe and a lot more pork,” he added. “We’re going to have more competition in public procurement. We’re going to have more competition in consumer goods. We’re going to get more competition in cars. We’re going to get more Canadian-made cars into Europe.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards

But CETA detractors do not appear to have been swathed by those kinds of arguments.

The opposition NDP said it “has long maintained that Canada should have deeper economic relations with the European Union — democratic countries with some of the highest environmental and labour standards in the world.”

“The question Canadians are now asking is whether Conservatives negotiated a good deal for Canada? Unfortunately, Conservatives have kept Parliament and Canadians in the dark throughout the negotiations with talks conducted in secret and without any transparency.”

The Liberals trade critic, however, welcomed the announcement, saying “we have been supportive of the deal from the start.”

“Canada is a small country. The world economy is huge. And if we want our middle class to be prosperous — which is the core of our agenda — having trade deals with the world is absolutely essential,” said Chrystia Freeland.

The Council of Canadians has been wary of corporations, in particular, being given too much legal leeway in other countries.

“While we support trade with Europe, this deal is a no-go. Companies will be given carte blanche to sue countries for laws they don’t like,” said Maude Barlow, who heads the council.

It was that issue that appeared to threatened the agreement late last month.

Some German officials publicly questioned the need for including foreign-investor protection. Others outside the German government called for the so-called investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) clause to be hived off and dealt with nation by nation.

But the federal government spokesman said Tuesday that ISDS was not a stumbling block to an agreement and that the German government was on side with the deal.

Saputo Inc. chief executive Lino Saputo Jr. said Tuesday the company was prepared for the projected increase in quota volumes of European cheeses into Canada in wake of the Canada-EU agreement. The Montreal-based dairy producer already makes specialty cheese under brand names Alexis de Portneuf and du Village that compete with European offerings.

If Friday's gains are anything to go by, investors are champing at the bit

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